Should S.D. keep strong-mayor system?

Voters will be asked to decide issue

TWO STRUCTURES

Strong mayor: The mayor, who serves as the city’s chief executive, oversees day-to-day operations, drafts the budget and heads labor negotiations. He doesn’t get a legislative vote but can veto City Council decisions. The eight-member City Council elects a president who sets the agenda. The City Council has final approval of budget and land-use issues.

City manager: The city manager — not an elected official — oversees day-to-day operations and crafts the budget at the City Council’s direction. The City Council, which includes the mayor, has final approval of budget and land-use issues.

The transfer of executive power at San Diego City Hall from a city manager to an elected mayor has led to significant changes in operations, procedures and the age-old art of political wheeling and dealing.

But, after four years of the experiment, is the city better off with a strong mayor at the helm?

That question is difficult to answer, as many of the actions taken by Mayor Jerry Sanders — the only strong mayor the city has known — to tackle a billion-dollar pension crisis and wasteful spending have been masked by a recession that continues to batter the city’s budget.

Headlines about San Diego continue to reflect bad news — albeit with less frequency — as they did in 2004 when voters fed up with backroom deals favored Proposition F and temporarily created the strong-mayor form of government. The change split the mayor from the City Council in January 2006 to give voters an elected official to hold accountable for city operations and established a system of checks and balances that had long been absent.

The council is expected to vote tomorrow to give voters a choice on the June 8 ballot to make the strong-mayor structure permanent or revert to the days when a bureaucrat ran the city at the council’s direction.

Some critics of the ballot measure, including Norma Damashek of the League of Women Voters, say city leaders have oversimplified a complex issue by giving voters an either/or option instead of allowing them to extend the trial period. The city also has tied the possible creation of a ninth council district to the strong-mayor initiative even though voters may want one but not the other.

“I think we’ve been so preoccupied with the budget, with the general economy, that nobody’s really been looking at whether the city has been working,” Damashek said. “We should keep it temporary long enough to get a new mayor in so that we won’t make a decision based on personality but based on the system.”

If the ballot measure fails, the city manager would be restored next January and the mayor would rejoin the council.

The two sides debating the pros and cons of strong mayor have remained largely unchanged in the past six years except for two notable exceptions.

Sanders, who initially opposed it, said he feels the trial has been a success because of the give-and-take that has developed between him and council members as they try to do what’s best.

“We’re conducting business in public now instead of behind closed doors, which was the way it always worked,” Sanders said. “The city manager had a vested interest in keeping everybody happy and when you’re keeping everybody happy you’re also giving away the store from time to time.”

Specifically, Sanders is referring to deals in 1996 and 2002 — dubbed Manager’s Proposal 1 and 2 — that increased retirement benefits for city workers without identifying a way to pay for them.

Those decisions also called for the city to pay less into the pension fund to ease budget tensions, which was the genesis of the $2.1 billion pension deficit.

One of the original backers of strong mayor has since made an about-face.

Steve Erie, a University of California San Diego political scientist, said the system has failed because of the ongoing power struggle over information between Sanders and the council.

“The Mayor’s Office has become a Kremlin in terms of an unwillingness to share critical information, particularly budget information with the council,” Erie said.

Councilwoman Donna Frye, who ran unsuccessfully against Sanders for mayor in 2005, said she has been frustrated for years by the mayor’s slow response to her requests for records and information.

“The mayor is extremely removed from the public because he or she no longer sits with the council at council hearings, doesn’t listen to the public comments or get a flavor of what’s going on,” Frye said. “You never get to see the mayor vote in public.”

Sanders, a Republican, chalked up the information disputes as friction caused by the mayor’s more prominent role as an equal branch of government on par with the council.

“People say you don’t get along as well, there’s not the same collegial atmosphere,” he said. “I don’t work for them. They don’t work for me. But we both try to do what’s right for the city.”

The two Republican council members — Carl DeMaio and Kevin Faulconer — say the strong-mayor structure is superior to the old government because it puts an end to the question of who is accountable at City Hall.

“We don’t want to go back to the old days,” Faulconer said. “The city has spent a lot of time digging itself out of the holes that were created by previous administrations. The new system allows for more openness, transparency, and checks and balances.”

One of the biggest fears was how the council dynamic would be altered. Reduced to only eight members, there is always the chance of tie votes.

In four years, there have been six 4-4 votes that resulted in issues or projects being rejected, according to a review by the City Clerk’s Office. Those votes included a deadlock over reducing pension benefits for new hires in May 2008. An additional dozen or so issues failed to reach five votes because of absences or abstentions but could have passed with an extra vote.

Council President Ben Hueso praised Sanders’ performance in his new role, but he has reservations about adding a new council seat.

“We don’t always agree, but overall the dynamic has produced good results for our community,” said Hueso, who is undecided about the ballot measure. “But I have problems with a new council district because there’s no way of funding it.”

Lorena Gonzalez, head of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, said her organization also remains undecided about keeping the structure because of the difficulty in judging its effectiveness.

“Looking at it very closely, I don’t think it’s exactly what everybody thought it would be,” Gonzalez said. “But the real important question on this ballot initiative is: Is it so successful that it’s worth spending possibly millions of dollars on a new council seat?”

For his part, Sanders said the voters should take his performance out of the equation when deciding on the initiative.

“People need to look at what’s going to be strong for government for the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years, not right for this second, and not for any one individual,” he said.